J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by J2SkiNews

A planned indoor snow centre for Middlesbrough in England's northeast has been granted full planning permission.

The £30m Subzero Snow Centre, which is expected to be up and running by 2022, will be England's most northerly, although there is a centre near Glasgow in Scotland, Snow Factor, which has signed up to operate the new Middlesbrough centre.

The facility, originally named 'Cool Runnings' was first announced in 2017, with an expected opening date of 2019, but as is common with indoor snow centre projects, there have been several delays.

The complex will have a main slope and nursery slope and also house a soft play facility, both climbing wall and ice-climbing wall, indoor sky diving and trampolines plus a cafe, restaurant, and shops. It hopes to attract 2.25 million visitors to the area.

"This is a ray of light in difficult times. Now we can make progress behind the scenes so we don't lose valuable time," a spokesperson for Subzero told the local Northern echo newspaper, adding,
"We are pressing ahead and we hope that the agreement of planning permission shows the high level of commitment we have towards this project - more than £750,000 has already been spent getting it to this stage."

When complete the facility could be the seventh in the UK, although another project in Swindon is also hoping to be build in the next few years after many years of delay. However it recently revealed it had an £80m funding gap after previously saying it had all the required investment in place, blaming "Brexit uncertainty."

However the team behind Subzero say that and the impact of Coranavirus are not a factor for them,

"The necessary land deals, financial backers, prospective operators and partners are on board and it would be great to see the public get behind us too in these tough times. …Subzero will make a huge contribution to the economy of the Tees Valley bringing jobs and shining a positive light on the region," the spokesperson told the Echo.

Following advice from the Public Health Authority, SkiStar, the group which runs most of Scandinavia's leading ski resorts says it will close its ski facilities in Åre, Sälen and Vemdalen in Sweden after the weekend.

The company's decision seems to be following the Norwegian model of three weeks' earlier, closing ski centres because it is feared local medical facilities will not be able to cope of a lot of tourists get sick, rather than because of a government order to do so.

They also seem to be following the American model of making a corporate rather than a state decision and taking the Finnish approach of announcing the closures nearly a week in advance rather than doing so sometimes within hours as was the case for many resorts in the Alps.

The background to the decision is the advice from Sweden's Public Health Authority to safeguard health care in the regions concerned, SkiStar say.

"The Public Health Authority has made clear that the measures that SkiStar has taken to reduce possible spread of contamination in connection with skiing on slopes and lifts have been satisfactory. The ski resorts are closed after SkiStar has consulted with the Public Health Authority about the prevailing situation regarding the local and regional pressure that is now on health care in areas in which SkiStar operates," a company statement reads.

Sälen, Åre and Vemdalen will close from 6 April. This means that the arriving Easter guests who were expected to come Saturday-Sunday are being immediately contacted and given the opportunity to book or re-book next year.

In Norway, SkiStar's ski resorts Hemsedal and Trysil were closed immediately after both municipalities decided on measures following the Norwegian government decision in mid-March. Sweden has taken a more gradual path of shutting down public facilities and limiting gathering in an attempt to better build 'herd immunity' against the virus. However it is now enforcing more restrictions.

It is not yet clear if all Swedish ski areas will close.

"Health care needs to gather strength to take care of an increased number of patients in connection with the spread of covid-19. An increased number of travellers would risk overloading an already-stressed healthcare," says Johan Carlson , Director General of the Public Health Authority

LOTA wrote:Swedish resorts Are, Salen and Vemdalen to close from Monday.

Yes just got the statement thanks. Have a nasty feeling I tempt fate every time I do one of these posts, not that there are many places left to do it now :( Japan seems to be having an upsurge in cases after the numbers previously dropping there too.

The deepest measured snowbase in the world at a still-operating ski resort has gone back above five metres, reaching 5.3 metres (17.7 feet) at Riksgransen in the Swedish Arctic Circle.

Previously several ski areas in Washington State including Alpental and Mt Baker in the US had passed five-metre depths during the winter before they closed a fortnight ago.

They had just been overtaken by Roldal in Western Norway which reached 5.4 metres just before it too closed.
Typically the world's deepest bases in any season are posted in March, after which thawing tends to outdo fresh snowfall and base depths start to ease.

It's rare for no resort to reach at least a six metre (20 foot) base during the season. Ski areas including Andermatt and Engelberg in Switzerland often reach six metre depths Sierra Nevada in southern Spain also posts deep spring snow most years and Mammoth in California has reached 30 feet/9 metres some winters.

Riksgransen (pictured above shortly before opening for the season a month ago), which only opened for its 2020 season at the end of February, has reported about a metre of snowfall in the past week and has more heavy snow forecast.

The current snow depth is reported to be the best in the region, which aims to offers skiing at midsummer each year, for more than 20 years.

The as-yet unopen Fonna summer ski area in Norway reports it found the snow was 11 metres deep on its glacier when it dug through to its slopes to prepare for the start of the 2020 season there, whenever that is allowed to happen.

A fully-functional Lego model of a Prinoth Leitwolf is likely to go in the production after the project received more than 10,000 supporters on Lego's ideas website.

The Leitwolf is the top of the range snow-groomer from the Tyrolian firm Prinoth. It is a powerful machine able to prepare the ski slopes: the front blade removes the bumps, while the rear tiller transforms the surface to a perfectly smooth groomed piste. A winch is mounted at the back for grooming steep slopes.

"The model is fully remote-controlled, and all the functionalities of the real model are working," Leitner say.

In order to go into production Lego require 10,000 supporters to register their support for a new design on their site within a year. The project launched in February 2018 but was granted a bonus 182 days in the middle of that year when it reached 1,000 backers and a further 182 days when it reached 5,000 supported in late August 2019. A final push by is backers got it over the 10,000 threshold and into 'consideration for production' just before the extended period allowed ended.

However, Lego now need to look in detail at the feasibility of producing the model.

Lego launched a Lego City ski resort set last autumn but that does not have a groomer in it.

daved wrote:Its a bit far...even if I could get a flight!

...then two weeks in compulsory quarantine in Beijing before they allowed you to travel to the ski slopes. You then need a green QR code pass to be allowed to buy a lift pass.

Japan and Sweden are the world's two largest ski nations to carry on skiing through the coronavirus pandemic.
The governments of both countries haven't seen a need to shut down ski centres, or most other public places including most schools, shops or restaurants.

The policy has had a mixed reaction from Swedish citizens, with some preferring that their nations were in lockdown like much of the rest of the world, others happy to carry on as normal. However surveys indicate Swedes generally trust their government more than the populations of most nations do.

In Sweden the government policy is the same as the one initially adopted by the British Government, before it's swift U turn earlier this month, with the objective of allowing infection to reach the younger and healthier parts of the population to develop so called 'herd immunity'. Older Swedes and those with underlying health issues are advised to self-isolate and many individuals and company staff are reported to be doing so anyway.

But Sweden and indeed Scandinavia's largest ski resort, Are, is reported to be fully booked with 30,000 guests in resort at weekends.

However the numbers that can gather in one place is being decimated from 500 down to 50 from this weekend and some Swedes think ultimately the country will follow the rest of Europe in to lockdown.

Norway, where ski areas closed a fortnight ago, has closed its border with Sweden and required anyone entering the country to go into quarantine. On the other side Finland initially followed the Swedish approach but ski resorts started to close there last week when a number of virus cases were found in their resorts.

In Japan a state of emergency in the northern area of Hokkaido, home to several of the country's most famous resorts, Niseko, was declared in late February but this was lifted 10 days ago when the number of cases there started to decline, having never really got that high. Foreigners arriving in the country are quarantined and the Japanese authorities have keep a close eye on those confirmed to have the virus, rigorously testing everyone they have come in to contact with, and appear to have the spread under control.

A majority of Japanese ski areas close for the season this weekend anyway, as they normally do at the end of March, however several dozen aim to stay open to early May, as they normally do too. Snowfalls of 20-30cm across the country's ski slopes this weekend (as pictured above at Nozawa Onsen today) should help with that.

Norway has three summer ski areas which normally open in April and May for seasons of varying lengths, some only a few months, others through to late October.

Of course this year no one knows as yet if or when these ski areas will be able to open but work is continuing to prepare them in case the pandemic restrictions are eased at some point.

One of the three, the Fonna glacier in Western Norway, has been documenting the effort to first dig out the access road to the glacier, then dig out the lifts and runs on the glacier. they've now reached the slopes, dug down, and report the snow is lying more than 11 metres deep.

This is an exceptional snow depth - most years it is at least five metres deep, sometimes six or seven, but rarely eight, let alone 11.

It's also remarkable as Scandinavia has reported a largely warmer (and thus wetter rather than snowier) than average ski season across much of the region.

That said western Norway has seen repeated heavy snowfall almost daily since last Christmas and at the point that all the ski areas in the country closed a fortnight ago, had snow lying up to 5.5 metres deep, just over taking the then deepest in the world this season at that point in Washington state USA.

The region's north, up in the Arctic circle, is also reporting the deepest snowbase for more than 20 years at resorts liker Bjorkliden and Riksgransen which, like other ski areas in Sweden, remain operational at the time of writing.